Epistemic cognition

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Epistemic cognition, sometimes known as epistemological beliefs, or personal epistemology, is "cognition about knowledge and knowing", an area of research in the learning sciences and educational psychology. Research into epistemic cognition investigates people's beliefs regarding the characteristics of knowledge and knowing—as distinct from thinking or believing in general—and the impact of this on learning.

Contents

Scope of research

Research on epistemic cognition has drawn on research in epistemology, the area of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. [1]

The seminal work in the area is characterised as research on student development and as an area of developmental psychology. More recent work has sought to situate epistemic cognition in a broad non-developmental model of learning. This work has linked epistemic cognition at an individual level to models of (1) metacognition, the construct characterising how people think about thinking, and (2) self-regulated learning, which characterises ability to identify learning needs and plan towards them, monitor, and reflect (including the work of Krista R. Muis).

Much of the research in epistemic cognition has taken place in science education contexts, with a focus on the relationship between scientific thinking, and beliefs regarding the 'nature of science', and epistemic cognition. Some of this research reflects the situated nature of scientific practices. Other work has explored relationships between epistemic cognition and constructs including, critical thinking, historical thinking, processing of sources of varying quality and levels of conflict, and broader academic achievement. [2]

Alongside investigation of learner epistemic cognition, a parallel line of work has investigated teacher epistemic cognition, and the influence of this on teaching practices and classroom assessment. [3]

Models

The research emerged in part from William G. Perry's research on the cognitive intellectual development of male Harvard College students. [1] [4] Developmental theories of epistemic cognition in this model have been developed by Deanna Kuhn and others, with a focus on the sequential phases of development characterising changes in views of knowledge and knowing. [1] [5] Kuhn said that her work built on Jean Piaget's work in the mid–20th century on genetic epistemology. [5] In contrast, dimensional models do not characterise epistemic cognition in terms of sequential development. Instead, they posit multiple factors that make up one's beliefs, which may vary independent of each other. [1]

In recent years, epistemic cognition research has reflected shifts in epistemology, in drawing on naturalized epistemology and virtue epistemology, in situated accounts of epistemic cognition, and a greater focus on the aims and processes of knowing (and beliefs thereof). [1]

Application to learning

As Sandoval, Greene, and Bråten (2016) outline, epistemic cognition research, largely from the learning sciences community, has found that epistemic cognition is related to academic performance, and other learning constructs. [1] However, there are concerns regarding standard psychometric instruments (surveys) used to measure epistemic cognition, and evidence that epistemic cognition may be domain- and perhaps task-specific, rather than general. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive science</span> Interdisciplinary scientific study of cognitive processes

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes with input from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science/artificial intelligence, and anthropology. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epistemology</span> Branch of philosophy concerning knowledge

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Piaget</span> Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher and academic (1896–1980)

Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognition</span> Act or process of knowing

Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and discover new knowledge.

The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. Other approaches, such as neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence learning. Some psychological approaches, such as social constructivism, focus more on one's interaction with the environment and with others. Other theories, such as those related to motivation, like the growth mindset, focus more on individuals' perceptions of ability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constructivism (philosophy of education)</span> Philosophical viewpoint about the nature of knowledge; theory of knowledge

Constructivism is a theory in education which posits that individuals or learners do not acquire knowledge and understanding by passively perceiving it within a direct process of knowledge transmission, rather they construct new understandings and knowledge through experience and social discourse, integrating new information with what they already know. For children, this includes knowledge gained prior to entering school. It is associated with various philosophical positions, particularly in epistemology as well as ontology, politics, and ethics. The origin of the theory is also linked to Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.

Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond", or "on top of". Metacognition can take many forms, such as reflecting on one's ways of thinking and knowing when and how to use particular strategies for problem-solving. There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) knowledge about cognition and (2) regulation of cognition. A metacognitive model differs from other scientific models in that the creator of the model is per definition also enclosed within it. Scientific models are often prone to distancing the observer from the object or field of study whereas a metacognitive model in general tries to include the observer in the model.

Alvin Ira Goldman is an American philosopher who is emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology.

John Hurley Flavell is an American developmental psychologist specializing in children's cognitive development who serves as Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor, Emeritus at Stanford University. A foundational researcher of metacognition and metamemory, he is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

William G. Perry Jr. was an educational psychologist who studied the cognitive development of students during their college years.

Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active exercise of that organism's sensorimotor processes. "The key point, then, is that the species brings forth and specifies its own domain of problems ...this domain does not exist "out there" in an environment that acts as a landing pad for organisms that somehow drop or parachute into the world. Instead, living beings and their environments stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or codetermination" (p. 198). "Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems...participate in the generation of meaning ...engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world." These authors suggest that the increasing emphasis upon enactive terminology presages a new era in thinking about cognitive science. How the actions involved in enactivism relate to age-old questions about free will remains a topic of active debate.

The psychology of science is a branch of the studies of social science defined most simply as the study of scientific thought or behavior. It is a collection of studies of various topics. The thought of psychology has been around since the late 19th century. Research on the psychology of science began in 1874, the field has seen a substantial expansion of activity in recent years. The specific field of psychology as a science first gained popularity mostly in the 1960s, with Abraham Maslow publishing an influential text on the subject, but this popularity faded, only re-emerging in the 1980s. Other studies of science include philosophy of science, history of science, and sociology of science or sociology of scientific knowledge.

Dysrationalia is defined as the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. It is a concept in educational psychology and is not a clinical disorder such as a thought disorder. Dysrationalia can be a resource to help explain why smart people fall for Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent encounters.

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?", and "Why do we know what we know?". Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims.

In psychology, constructivism refers to many schools of thought that, though extraordinarily different in their techniques, are all connected by a common critique of previous standard approaches, and by shared assumptions about the active constructive nature of human knowledge. In particular, the critique is aimed at the "associationist" postulate of empiricism, "by which the mind is conceived as a passive system that gathers its contents from its environment and, through the act of knowing, produces a copy of the order of reality".

Metalinguistic awareness, also known as metalinguistic ability, refers to the ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language. The concept of metalinguistic awareness is helpful in explaining the execution and transfer of linguistic knowledge across languages. Metalinguistics expresses itself in ways such as:

Metacognitive therapy (MCT) is a psychotherapy focused on modifying metacognitive beliefs that perpetuate states of worry, rumination and attention fixation. It was created by Adrian Wells based on an information processing model by Wells and Gerald Matthews. It is supported by scientific evidence from a large number of studies.

Jennifer. Nagel is a Canadian philosopher at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metacognition. She has also written on 17th century (Western) philosophy, especially John Locke and René Descartes.

Applied epistemology refers to the study that determines whether the systems of investigation that seek the truth lead to true beliefs about the world. A specific conceptualization cites that it attempts to reveal whether these systems contribute to epistemic aims. It is applied in practices outside of philosophy like science and mathematics.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Sandoval, William A.; Greene, Jeffrey Alan; Bråten, Ivar (March 2016). "Understanding and promoting thinking about knowledge: origins, issues, and future directions of research on epistemic cognition". Review of Research in Education. 40 (1): 457–496. doi:10.3102/0091732X16669319. hdl: 10983/25598 . ISSN   0091-732X. JSTOR   44668629. S2CID   149020448.
  2. Knight, Simon (28 March 2017). "Epistemic cognition: A lens onto fake news". The Psychologist . Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  3. Buehl, Michelle M.; Fives, Helenrose (2016). "The role of epistemic cognition in teacher learning and praxis". In Greene, Jeffrey Alan; Sandoval, William A.; Bråten, Ivar (eds.). Handbook of Epistemic Cognition. Educational psychology handbook series. New York: Routledge. pp. 247–264. ISBN   9781138013407. OCLC   911594486.
  4. Perry, Jr., William G. (1999) [1970]. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme . Jossey-Bass higher and adult education series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN   0787941182. OCLC   39455948.
  5. 1 2 Kuhn, Deanna (1992). "Piaget's child as scientist". In Beilin, Harry; Pufall, Peter B. (eds.). Piaget's Theory: Prospects and Possibilities. The Jean Piaget Symposium series. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 185–208. ISBN   9780805810509. OCLC   24380541.

Further reading